Standard surgical procedures such as tissue resection for use in treatment of benign and malignant tumors of the liver and other organs have several key shortcomings affecting efficacy, morbidity and mortality. A fundamental issue in these shortcomings is the inability of the resection to be performed in a variety of cases. To help overcome this limitation a series of mono-polar radio frequency (RF) devices were designed for use in tissue ablation and resection. These mono-polar devices however have limited usefulness in typical clinical settings because they are overly complex and difficult to use and result in time consuming procedures that can lead to auxiliary injury to patients through grounding pad burs. Further, these mono-polar tissue ablation devices are limited in the scope and size of the ablation that can be created, and exhibit poor consistency of ablative results along with an overall low efficiency. Consequently, there is a need for a tissue ablation system that overcomes the shortcomings of these mono-polar tissue ablation devices.